A Strange Encounter
by Wandering Mavka
Summary: Rose is finished duty at Torchwood, which involved rescuing a young, green-skinned girl from hostile aliens. She then hears the girl tell her, "There's someone waiting for you", before disappearing and leaving nothing behind nothing but a pendant...


**Here I present to you the result of cheating on a writing meme that involved shuffling through ten songs, and writing a drabble/vignette surrounding a selected fandom, using the song's length as a time limit.**

**Unsurprisingly, I ended up choosing Doctor Who to use in my meme. However, when I got to the sixth song on my list, it just made me go all out.**

**In this particular fic, I used the song "Encounter" by the English indie band, The Green Children, as a template for the adventure that I've created. And I didn't simply use the theme of the song, I used the inspiration that brought it to life - the legend of The Green Children of Woolpit. **

**Disclaimer: You'd have to have been drinking five pints of Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster to even _consider_ me worthy enough to own the masterpieces that I've used as inspirations for this fic. Also, I admit that the first two paragraphs of the legend that Rose reads from the book I copied from Wikipedia, and added my own story to it so that it would make sense. Please, don't sue me. **

**Right, then... Allons-y!**

* * *

><p>Rose was confused. She couldn't quite place the feeling that came over her at the thought of the strange alien that she had recently encountered on her most recent Torchwood case. The girl had been rescued from a threat of other more hostile species and was in safe hands at Canary Wharf.<p>

Life in Pete's World was mundane as it always was, especially without the Doctor there nullifying the domesticity. Even the alien invasions seemed like a normal thing now.

This did not dispel the wave of nostalgia that would rush over her at the faraway look in the eyes of the green-skinned child that always looked towards the sky. She often had the same look in her eyes, head in the clouds. No, not in the clouds, up in the heavens.

"There's someone waiting for you," a voice broke her out of her reverie.

Rose turned her head to find the pale-green humanoid girl looking at her with wide eyes. Her own eyes equally widened at this.

"Don't worry, you will be with him soon," the girl assured her in a breezy voice and a dreamy smile. Somehow, the girl reminded Rose of a book character that she had long forgotten since being stuck in Pete's World.

However, she did not have enough time to register this fact, or to contemplate which exact character she had been thinking of, because the green-skinned girl then vanished from before her eyes, leaving nothing behind her but a small emerald-like pendant.

Rose walked over to it and picked it up. There were strange symbols on it that she couldn't read, which was strange because the effect that the TARDIS had on the translations in her brain never seemed to leave her, even as she was trapped in an alternate dimension. This was a strange sight indeed.

Soon after, Rose had started researching whatever information was available about the words on the pendant. There was nothing found in any databases on the internet, or in any newspaper.

It wasn't until Rose caught wind of something that related to it in Woolpit, Suffolk of all places. _Conveniently local, no? _she thought begrudgingly. She strode towards the village in an agitated manner. The pendant was bouncing around in her pocket as she walked. Reaching the address that was written down on her little scrap of paper, she knocked on the door three times.

No answer. She knocked again. Still, no answer. _Maybe they're not home_, Rose thought to herself dejectedly, but the sudden swish of the door broke her out of her thoughts. There was no one in front of her. She then supposed that it was an intention for her to go in. The first thing that Rose noted was that all of the walls, floorboards, windows of stain glass - even doorknobs and metal on furniture - were in some shade of green. This wasn't the only strange thing. The house seemed to be completely deserted for some reason, and there was an ethereal air surrounding Rose as she slowly walked through the place.

When she came to the sitting room, it was as if something had _wanted _to be noticed by her. That something was lying on a stool in front of the divan. A book. Rose picked it up slowly and gingerly, afraid of any infections that it might have been carrying. Taking a good look at it, she read the title in a soft mutter: "The Green Children of Woolpit..." And there it was, the same symbol on the pendant that the girl had left behind.

Rose opened the book. With a tiny squeak, she dropped it as it started to glow green. The words in it then seemed to translate themselves to her eyes as she picked the book back up, reading it to herself:

_There were once two children that were found in the village of Woolpit, during the reign of good King Stephen. The children, brother and sister, were of generally normal appearance except for the green colour of their skin. They spoke in an unknown language, and the only food they would eat was green beans._

_Eventually they learned to eat other food and lost their green pallor, but the boy was sickly and died soon after the children were baptised. The girl adjusted to her new life, but she was considered to be rather loose and wanton in her conduct. After she learned to speak English the girl explained that she and her brother had come from St Martin's Land, an underground world whose inhabitants are green._

_The girl reacted in a strange manner towards her brother's death. She did not mourn over it, but rather rejoiced in a hopeful way. She told those who had asked that it was because soon she would truly be reunited him in St Martin's Land. The people did not believe her, and thought that she was mad._

_However, their opinions had changed one day as that same boy, completely flushed green again with health, had appeared at the girl's doorstep. She bolted towards him as she saw him, affirming over and over again that she knew he would come back. He held out a stone to her in his hand, which she then grabbed. As she did so, the green returned to her skin as well. Then, right before the eyes of the girl's caretakers, both children vanished completely with cheerful waves directed toward them. They were coming back to St Martin's Land._

Rose finished reading the tale and took the pendant out in confusion. She then remembered what the girl had said earlier about 'someone who was waiting for her'. Well, she got the facts accurate, I can give her that, she mused thoughtfully. This then propped the question that seemed to be blatantly going through her head after reading the tale. Would this really get me back to the Doctor?

"Not by itself, of course. It is merely a power source." Rose jumped a mile at the voice, and found the same girl who left the pendant standing in the room with her, a serene smile on her face.

"Blimey, you tryin' ta give me a hear' attack?" she asked the girl, panting slightly.

"Oh, my apologies, Miss. I merely thought it was more convenient to appear directly to you, rather than waste my time walking all that way through the hall." The girl seemed to emanate an excited aura as she walked up to Rose.

"So... what were you sayin' about this bein' a power source?" Rose questioned after regaining control and calming down.

"That is exactly what I said. It's a power source!" the girl replied gleefully.

"But a power source to what?" Rose questioned further, not liking the lack of clarity that the girl presented.

"Oh, that is up to you and all of your people to figure out. It can be anything, really." The green girl was clearly enjoying this cryptic exchange, Rose noted. "The jewel that serves as the pendant is the key component that contains the energy which makes inter-dimensional travel possible. The only other thing you need is an inter-dimensional rift, really."

Finally, the pieces were coming together. The machine part wouldn't be hard to get by, what with all the tecchies who worked at Torchwood with her. The inter-dimensional rift was, of course, the dreaded Void Room that Rose walked by on her low days to give her strength to carry on with her life without the Doctor, or just to weep her heart out in front of the white wall inside it when she could no longer keep control. It all seemed so perfect. There was just one thing that nagged her.

"How d'you know all of this? I mean, that I'm not from this dimension?" she inquired the girl in a soft voice.

The girl simply smiled even wider, if that were possible. "Oh, Miss - the Void stuff all around you was quite evident when I first saw you in those woods where your team found me! In fact, it was giving me a runny nose, floating around you into the air like that!"

Rose couldn't help it, she just had to laugh at that. The tension that she had been holding in this whole time had been lifted, as the girl joined in with her. It took a few minutes for laughter to fully subside.

"My name's Rose, by the way," she told the girl, uncertainly.

"Rose, what a lovely name. Mine's Nephrita." She smiled at Rose wistfully.

"And.. your brother?" Rose muttered softly with caution.

Nephrita's face relaxed, but the smile still remained. "His name is Maragd."

Rose returned the grin. _Emerald and Jade... how fitting_.

"Yes, it certainly is!" Nephrita piped up.

Rose looked slightly affronted, but there was more mischief written on her face. "Did you just read my mind, _without _my permission?"

Nephrita looked startled and started apologizing profusely. "I'm so sorry, Rose! On my planet, it's common courtesy to skim over a person's thoughts in order to engage in conversation with them! I didn't realize that Earth was different... I don't understand - why are you laughing?"

Rose struggled to speak as she giggled uncontrollably. "I'm only - pulling your leg! Oh, you just - remind me of someone - who did that to me _all _the damn time - 'I'm read like a book,' my arse..." she muttered the last part.

"Was it him, the one who is waiting for you?" Nephrita questioned softly.

Rose had managed to calm down again, and gave her own wistful smile at the memory. "Yeah, that was him, the Doctor..." she said when she found her voice. She was gazing towards the stain glass window, in the same reverie as Nephrita had previously had been in during their first meeting.

Coming back down to Earth, Rose turned back to the mythical girl. "Thank you, Nephrita," she said to her.

Nephrita, in turn, walked up to her. "It was the least that I could do to thank you for saving me from those bad men." She then did something that Rose hadn't expected in the slightest: Nephrita gave her a hug, and Rose just couldn't help returning it.

"I'll have to get going soon, Rose," Nephrita said as they released each other from the hug.

A thought struck Rose's mind at that statement. "Wait, how are you able to transport yourself without the jewel?"

Nephrita proceeded to explain. "When my brother and I came to this world and started to consume human food, our original physiologies were being altered and abilities nullified, which included our ability to teleport. All that it took was for him to return to St Martin's land - something that people around us misguidedly saw as death - in order to regain that power. Simply touching the jewel on the pendant reawakened the energy that is found among our whole species, the one that we had lost when living as humans. And... I see that there is an energy that you're missing as well, but there's traces of it still in you!" The last sentence was delivered in a hushed voice.

Rose laughed at this. "That'll be the Atron Energy that I absorbed through time travel aboard the TARDIS..." It was uncanny how similar her story was to Nephrita's. The girl in question then stepped away from Rose and took a deep breath.

"If I don't see you again soon..." she began.

"You never know!" Rose playfully sang in an off-tune key.

"... then it has been a pleasure getting to know you, Rose. I hope you find whoever is waiting for you!" With that, Nephrita disappeared, making the house empty except for Rose's obvious presence.

She looked down at the pendant jewel in her hand, rubbing circles on the foreign word etched into it. She could now read it thanks to the strange book that she had found in Nephrita's Earth home. It said, 'Home', and Rose couldn't help but feel the anticipation that built itself inside her heart at the thought of this impossible object being the key to reuniting her with the crazy, loving mad alien again in his Blue Box.

Walking out of the house, into the village towards her TARDIS blue Cadillac, Rose thought in amusement, _What a strange encounter, indeed..._


End file.
